Modern unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), with their small sizes and flexibility, have become widely used in a variety of military and civilian applications such as surveillance and tracking, remote sensing, search and rescue, scientific research and the like. UAVs are typically controlled wirelessly by remote control equipments and/or by onboard control programs via communication links and the performance of such communication links can have a direct impact on the safety and effectiveness of the UAV's missions.
Depending on the direction of the data transmission, UAV communication links can be generally categorized as uplinks and downlinks. An uplink is primarily responsible for the transmission of control data from a base station or a remote control device to the UAV, for example, to achieve real-time flight attitude control of the UAV and/or command automation. The downlink, on the other hand, is primarily responsible for the transmission of telemetry data, image data and other data from the UAV to the base station or remote control device.
Currently, the transmission of image data and the transmission control data are typically implemented by independent systems. That is, the base station and the UAV are each provided with two independent sets of devices, one for remote control and the other for image transmission. The two systems can work simultaneously on the same public channel to achieve respective remote control and image transmission functionalities. However, two separate sets of equipment can take up a large amount of space, affecting portability and increasing cost.
Furthermore, when operated simultaneously, the image transmission system and the remote control systems can interfere with each other, affecting the stability of the remote control system and reducing the effective distance for remote control. The interference can also cause decline in the quality of image transmission, reducing the effective distance for image transmission. Meanwhile, both the image transmission system and remote control system can be susceptible to interference from other sources, further degrading the performance.